


From Our Chosen Homes

by plinys



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: F/F, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-13
Updated: 2015-04-13
Packaged: 2018-03-22 15:56:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3734734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/plinys/pseuds/plinys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Have you got a name?” “I have plenty.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	From Our Chosen Homes

Shireen supposes that she ought to be used to it by now.

It’s been months - and still every time she hears the words “your grace” she turns over her shoulder expecting to see a ghost standing behind her.

There’s never anybody there.

\---

They’re rebuilding, too many years of war and subpar upkeep had left even the finest of buildings of the Red Keep in ruin, so rebuild they must.

Some days she watches them. Shireen stands on a balcony and surveys the hundreds of builders – the carpenters, the stone masons, the gardeners – carefully put the city back into its proper order.

“Do you remember what it used to look like before,” a voice at her shoulder asks.

She doesn’t startle these days.

Certainly, not like she might have as a girl.

Especially not when the person interrupting her had never mastered the art of walking with any sort of dignity or even the barest illusion of silence, but she does have a decency to glance in his direction with an expression that is not entirely pleased. It’s an expression that she practices in the mirror on more nights than she would like to admit, a ghostly impression of one she had seen many times as a girl.

He must recognize the look, because there’s a hint of a smile on her cousin’s face.

There’s something that’s changed in him. The boy she once knew looks weathered now, the Essos sun having burnt his skin in the years gone by and changed his demeanor.

“It’s not polite to sneak up on your queen,” she points out to her Master of Ships, but her tone is soft and never stern.

“You needed the company,” he replies, simply and sure, and she does not object.

Too polite to admit that she would rather be left alone with her thoughts.

“I met a girl once in the streets of Bravos,” he starts, and Shireen’s already wrinkling her nose, ready to remind Edric that she’s seen him as something nearly a brother for too long to feel comfortable hearing of his exploits, but even now he has a way of surprising her, “who swore she knew the Red Keep better than any you or I ever could.

“That would not be much of an accomplishment,” Shireen replies.

She’d only ever seen the keep but in rare moments of her childhood, her father having always preferred to keep her safe as Dragonstone if he had his way.

Though now her childhood home was burnt down to its base stones, by the very creatures of its namesake and she was expected to sit upon a throne far too big for a girl of seven and ten.

The war made them all grow up far too fast.

“Perhaps I could reach out, see if she might be willing to assist in the restorations.”

Shireen makes a non-committal noise in reply, “if you wish.”

\---

There’s something familiar about her cousin’s contact, that Shireen cannot place her finger upon.

She stands with her feet apart, in men’s breeches, and with hair cut close to her head in an altogether unfamiliar fashion, but there’s a fire in her dark eyes that makes the young queen almost envious. A fire that is so desperately familiar to her. The sort of fire that had burnt bright in the red witch’s flames, and upon the fields when the dragons arrived.

“Are you an architect,” Shireen asks, because that’s what they need, that’s what Edric promised he would find for her.

But the woman standing before her does not seem to fit the role.

She smiles, a smile that is wide with teeth bared like a wolf, before replying, “I’m whatever you want me to be, your grace.”

“Have you got a name?”

“I have plenty.”

\---

They have made their camp in the libraries, because it’s where Shireen feels most at home.

She has always preferred the shelves lined with books to the dark small council chamber or the emptiness of the throne room.

There are papers spread across tables, plans of the castle drawn to the best of her builder’s knowledge, added in with her own memories from her explorations as a girl. It is there that the woman from Bravos makes her corrections, fingers skimming the paper and pointing out hallways, dungeons, and hidden pathways that Shireen had never managed to find.

She looks up slowly, prepared to ask how exactly it is that the other woman knows of all these things, but the words die on her lips as she meets deep scrutinizing gray eyes.

Shireen knows that nobody will sing songs of her beauty.

Perhaps if she’s lucky they’ll sings songs of her leadership, or her intelligence, and neglect to mention the scars upon her cheek that mar her from ever being considered a beautiful queen.

She has long since accepted that fact, and has become use to the stares that will be directed her way when men foolishly think that she is unaware of their eyes on her.

And yet, even so she cannot help the heat the slowly rushes to her face under the other woman’s intense gaze.

Eventually she manages to find her voice, “one day, you will have to show me all of these places.”

“We could go right now,” the proposition comes so easily, fired back effortlessly.

“Would I ruin my gown?”

“Almost certainly.”

“Then we ought not to,” Shireen says, at last, as though a great weight is being lifted from her shoulders, “it wouldn’t be proper.”

The laugh that comes from the other woman’s lips startles her, it’s harsh and bitter, but warm at the same time.

“You remind me of the Septa I used to have as a girl.”

She wants to ask on that point, ask how a girl who grew up with a Septa could speak like a commoner and wear breeches like a man, but there’s a line between them that even a queen does not dare cross.

So instead she focuses on the map once more and says, “tell me what’s down this path?”

\---

She feels like a child, sneaking out and doing something her father would never approve of.

Even though her father has long since been laid to rest, and her childhood is an affair she would rather forget.

The borrowed breeches feel wrong, her dark hair is pulled back from her face exposing the scarring that she would normally shy away from putting on display, and yet she has never felt more right until that moment.

“It’s incredible,” she says, voice awed as her eyes take in the sort of sights she had only dreamed of as a child, “how did you find this?”

The other woman shrugs her shoulders, the word, “exploring,” answering nothing and everything at the same time.

“It’s incredible.”

“You’ve said that already.”

“Yes, I have,” Shireen agrees, reaching out finally to lay a palm upon the bones in front of her. They’re bigger up close than she had imagined, and far less threatening than the ones she had seen before her eyes all those moons ago.

“The old king had them moved down here, after he killed the mad king.”

“Jaime Lannister killed the mad king,” Shireen corrects, not moving her gaze from the skulls, “my uncle killed the prince.”

“Is that how the story goes?”

They fall into a silence that doesn’t sit right, and for a moment Shireen is desperate to break it.

She can hear the sound of her own heart beating against her chest, it’s unfamiliar and unwanted.

“They’re bigger in person, more frightening” Shireen says, finally removing her hand from the bones before her.

“The men or the dragons?”

\---

She’s never been kissed before, not like this.

There are a thousand thoughts running through her head, about how they ought not to be doing this here and now, or perhaps not at all.

And yet, Shireen cannot stop what has already begun.

There are fingers like ice pressed against the back of her neck, tugging her forward without a care for decency.

Her own hands grip the book she had been holding moments before, as though it’s a life line, her knuckles white as she tried to take control of the situation.

Shireen’s hesitance is noted, and a second later she’s pulling back and away, arching an eyebrow that makes her look coy and charming at the same time – it’s a highly distracting look.

“Is there a problem, your grace?”

“Shireen, please,” she insists, because if she cannot shed the title in her work than at least here she should be able to put it to rest.

“Shireen,” the woman repeats, the words holding a different weight as they roll of her tongue, and sending chills up her spine.

“Yes, just like that,” she breathes out in reply, “and what should I call you?”

“Arya.”


End file.
